It is different from ska, rocksteady and dancehall, and occupies a
specific period which began in late 1967. Jamaican popular music, since
1960, can therefore be roughly divided into four eras, each of which had
its particular beat: ska (1962-1966), rocksteady (1966-1967/68), and
reggae (1968-1983). From 1983, the prevalent beat was reggae’s
offspring, dancehall.However, there is one period of Jamaican music
that has consistently been overlooked by musicologists. It is a period I
would choose to call the pre-ska era, the earlier part of which was
dominated by Jamaican mento music (approximately 1951-1956) – a type of
calypso-flavoured music said to be rooted in the Jamaican slave
plantation system and which was indigenous to Jamaica.

Forced to get creative

Between
1957 and 1960, Jamaican music was dominated by rhythm and blues and
boogie recordings patterned off the American blues, which was very
popular in Jamaican dance halls in the mid to late 1950s.

When the American blues records began ‘drying up’ and disappeared from American record shelves, Jamaican producers,promoters
and sound system operators had no alternative but to make and produce
their own recordings with the same flavour as the American ones in order
to keep their business alive. Recordings like Oh Mannie Oh, and How Can
I Be Sure by Higgs and Wilson, Boogie In My Bones and Little Sheila by
Laurel Aitken, Muriel by Alton and Eddy and Lolipop Girl by The Jiving
Juniors were examples of popular recordings during that period, which
also marked the birth of the Jamaican recording industry.The first
shift in the Jamaican music beat away from the mento rhythms was
observed when Bunny and Skully recorded a cut entitled Another Chance,
which Skully himself claimed was done between 1953 and 1954. On the
heels of this came the Jamaican rhythm and blues and boogies, which
evolved into what became known as the ska beat.

Jamaican popular
music then went through several changes, culminating with reggae and
dancehall beats. These metamorphoses have impacted reggae music to the
extent that it has become an international phenomenon Bob Marley,
Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown and Peter Tosh have played more than ordinary
roles in establishing this phenomenon. As early as 1968, Marley’s Trench
Town Rock and Brown’s No Man Is An Island a year later, signalled the
direction in which the music was going. Cliff’s The Harder They Come
helped to put Jamaica on the international music map when it appeared in
a movie of the same name.

Possessing a sense of conviction, a
lack of pretence and a natural intensity in the beat, reggae music grew
by leaps and bounds across several continents during the 1970s,
bolstered by more than half a dozen top-class albums by the reggae king
Bob Marley for producer Chris Blackwell.

Many masters

At
home, the initial impact was felt through recordings like The Cables’s
Baby Why, The Heptones I Shall Be Released and Alton Ellis’s Breaking
Up, among others.

What is most interesting is the many artistes
and producers who lay claim to doing the first reggae recording and
creating the reggae beat. For all intents and purposes, Toots Hibbert of
the Maytals vocal group seemed to be the first to mention the name
reggae in a song, although he never ever claimed to be the inventor.

Most
musicologists, however, accept Larry and Alvin’s Nanny Goat, done for
producer Clement Dodd in 1968, as the first recording with a true reggae
feel. It was like the guitar on the delay meshed with an organ shuffle,
one source claimed.

But in a sense, reggae combines all the
previous forms of Jamaican popular music – the ska riff on top of a
slowed down rocksteady bass line, with a touch of mento. Dodd, the
producer of Nanny Goat, claims that he returned from England just before
the reggae beat started with a few gadgets, like a delay, which
influenced that Nanny Goat beat. Singer Stranger Cole, on the other
hand, claims that his recording of Bangarang, done for producer Bunny
Lee, was the first reggae song. Another record producer, Clancy Eccles,
claims he started the beat.

Unsung legend

In the
midst of all of this, there was a 1965 recording titled Heavenless by a
Studio One aggregation that possessed a distinct reggae beat, yet no
mention was ever made of this recording as being the first reggae song.

Many
musicologists agree that the birth of reggae was a spontaneous act born
out of experimentation with the existing rocksteady beat. Others claim
it was a deliberate attempt by some musicians to change the beat from
rocksteady to something that was more lively and exciting. The theory
has also been advanced that new producers like Eccles, Lee Scratch Perry
and Bunny Lee, couldn’t always get the regular musicians, who almost
invariably worked for Dodd and Duke Reid, so they resorted to
less-experienced musicians who tried something different and unwittingly
created a completely new rhythm.

Even with the present upsurge
of the dancehall beat, authentic reggae remains a dominant force and
continues to be such even up to the present day. The importance of the
reggae phenomenon has led music administrators to designate July 1 as
international reggae day each year.

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